Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Beer Review/Tasting Notes - Kelly Green Brewing Co. Twelve Avenues

Doing something a little different today on the blog. In the past I've done some tasting notes for some other homebrewer's beers but I've never really done them for a commercial release. I guess this is more of a beer review/tasting notes kind of post. I thought I'd throw it in there to give some life to the blog and I'll have a little blurb at the end of the blog about what's going on and just an update of The Farmhouse Obsession.

This beer comes out of Pittman, NJ from a little brewery named Kelly Green Brewing Co. If you are a member of the Saison group or Milk the Funk on Facebook, you may already know that a very respected homebrewer named Ed Coffey (from Ales of the Riverwards) is now running a Saison and barrel aged venture for the brewery. I've had a good many of Ed's beers so far on the homebrew level and now the professional level. All of them have been great beers. What I want to do with this post is give a review and some tasting notes on a new beer they are releasing this Saturday (July 29, 2017). Ed was generous enough to send me a bottle early to give him my thoughts.

He described the beer to me just a little bit but left it where I could approach the beer pretty blind. I like that. Mostly what he told me was that it was bitter. More so than we see typically now days with where Saison brewing is. More on that later. Let's get into the beer.

Kelly Green Brewing Co. - Twelve Avenues

From the release post:

"This
Bière de Coupage is comprised predominantly of fresh, hoppy Saison with
a small portion of barrel aged Adit blended in at bottling, when young
this beer drinks as a clean, earthy, floral, zippy little saison with a
firm bitterness. But over time our house culture of wild yeast and
bacteria will take over and the beer will change and evolve month to
month. This is the first bottling but you can expect each batch of
Twelve Avenues to be wildly different than the last but always feature a
strong hop profile."

Appearance: Slightly hazy golden in color. Honestly cloudy would be a good descriptor to borrow from IPA brewing now days. Bright white head full of tiny well packed bubbles. Carbonation is streaming up the edges of the glass and there was a solid pop when I popped the cap. Very nice head retention. I had a pretty solid head throughout the first glass. Pretty nice lacing after a swirl of the glass as well. Anyway, you can tell more of the appearance from the photos, even though I'm a pretty bad photographer.

Looks great in the Saison group glass!

Aroma: Lots going on in the aroma. Notes of lemon balm, citrus zest, some light pear or white grape bordering on peach, a bit of an herbal quality in there too. There is definitely notes of the cereal grains in there but not anything sweet. Just a bit of rye aroma almost like bready notes but not overpowering or anything like that. Rye is hard to describe on the nose. It's grainy but not sweet and it can sometimes be hard to pick up at all. This balanced the prevalent hop presence nicely. Something of real note here, not any lactic sourness in the nose. Just a light touch of some fruity brettanomyces characters but not sour at all. Smells fantastic. Similar to a fresh Orval if you have had that. Or maybe XX Bitter or even some de la Senne beers I've had. The aroma finishes with just a light touch of pepper and a very mild soapiness. Not offensive soapiness at all and not astringent. I've seen this in brett beers with lots of hops or even some higher hopped beers that are really dry. If I had to describe in one line I'd say something like an American XX Bitter or a more fruity/citrusy XX Bitter. (I need to pickup another bottle of that when I see it to get a fresh comparison)

Proper glassware was used in this tasting!

Flavor:I took the first sip and I chuckled. I chuckled because it was bitter. Just like Ed had said it would be. It was bitter like some of the "old" style pale ales and even some IPAs from before the wave of juice bombs. I'm not sure what the IBUs were but there definitely are some in there. After I got over the firs sip and went back I picked up some of the flavors. Grapefruit pith and skin, light pear and peach, very faint banana maybe, and a touch of the grain flavors from the nose. There is a green/grassy flavor that I sometimes get with dry beers that have a lot of hops. Pairs very nicely with how bitter it is. When you swallow the finish is very dry and you are left with a fantastic bitterness that just lingers. It makes you want to drink more and definitely enhances the drinkability of it for me. With big bitter West Coast Style IPAs I personally don't find them so drinkable. With how dry this is, it's super refreshing. No alcohol notes at all. At 6% you don't expect to have any alcohol notes. Again, no sourness there. Just a brightness to it that I would say comes from the blending of the more acidic beer.

Mouthfeel: Great body and higher carbonation give this dry beer a medium body. Perfect for drinking in the middle of a hot Mississippi Summer.

Second pour just as lovely as the first.

Overall:This
is a fantastic change of pace to the growing popularity of sour Saison. Right now, I see more acidic sour Saisons than I see hoppy, bitter versions. Don't get me wrong, I love those and I find myself in discussions pretty often about if a Saison should be sour or not. But, this was wonderful to see. I think this is a Saison lover's dream. It's also a beer I think many brewers will like. Ed mentioned that to me and I couldn't agree more. While I do think there will be others that will really like this beer (maybe some old school IPA fans) too, I do think that it will hit home with a select few.

I freaking love his labels. I believe his wife does them and she does a great job.

I'm a very big fan of this beer. I don't write this post to stoke Ed's ego or anything like that. This is an honest review and my actual tasting notes. I wanted to write it because it's something different than we are seeing right now in the beer world. There's been a shift away from bitterness it seems. People standing in line for juice bombs with little to no bitterness and more Saisons coming out every day on the sour side. While I love seeing more Saison anywhere, I'm glad to see someone producing something like this beer.

If you are anywhere near the area, I think this is a great beer to go pick up on Saturday. It's very well done and a beer worth picking up. I couldn't help but think of Amos Brown while I drank this beer. I know he's a fan of more bitter beers.

Thanks for reading this review. I know it is a bit different than what the blog has been in the past. I also know I've been slow posting this year. It's been a pretty big year so far. In March I was lucky enough to have my girlfriend become my fiancé and we'll be getting married in November. We've been working on wedding stuff and life in general has just been busy this year. I'll be brewing more soon and will have more posts then. The blog is definitely not dead and I'm still obsessed as ever!

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An Interview with Yvan de Baets of Brasserie De La Senne

Excerpt from the Interview of Yvan de Baets by The Beer Temple YouTube Channel

“People think you have to use those very yeasts (farmhouse or saison) for making Saison or farmhouse ales, but that’s not true. Imagine you are a farmer in the 19th century and of course you will use your yeast because it is always better. And when you get an infection which goes really too far, you take the yeast of the neighbor which is a totally different yeast, etc. Then you have dozens and dozens of Saison yeasts in the past. Depending on the way you want to make your Saison, I consider you could make Saison with easily a hundred different yeasts. That’s not a problem.”

Savoring the Saison Panel from GABF

A description of Saison by Belgian brewer Yvan de Baets of Brasserie de la Senne

“A saison must therefore be low in alcohol (in the modern — and Belgian — sense of the word in any case), around 4.5 to 6.5%. It must be highly attenuated (90 to 95% on average, if not more, as apparent attenuation) and dry. It must also be either sour or very bitter (with a bitterness obtained by the use of a massive amount of hops low in alpha acid). It shouldn’t in any case be smooth. If spices are used, it must be with the utmost moderation. A saison is not by any means a spice soup. Ideally, it should be fermented, at least partially, by wild yeasts as well as by cultured varieties. An authentic saison has a small 'wild' side, rustic, indefinable, far from the clean aspect of certain engineered beers of today. In one word, it must have extraordinary character.”